Joe Rogan - David Goggins Journey From 300 lbs to a Navy Seal

How'd you become that guy? You know what? I grew up not that guy. Yeah. So a lot of people put a title on me. They want to... They see me now. They see me now as the guy that with his shirt off, who can do 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours, who can run 205 miles in 39 hours, who can do all this crazy shit. But what they don't understand is they don't understand the journey that it took me to get to this point. And what got me to this point was I was just the opposite of what I am today. I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that got in front of me. But not many people knew that. I had two people. Like the real me was like this very scared, insecure, stuttering, got beat up by his dad, all this kind of stuff. And I built this fake person that walked around like my shit didn't stink. You know? So that's kind of how I did it. And I do a process of time. I realized that I was lying to myself and lying to people. But it's a fascinating journey though because you are that guy now. You genuinely are a legit badass. At one point in time you were a legit, terrified person. So what was the process? How did you step forth? Well, it's a long process. My dad beat the shit out of me when I was growing up. I was the first black baby born in this hospital called Miller Fillmore in Buffalo, New York. My dad owned skating rinks, he owned bars, he ran prostitutes from Canada to Buffalo, New York. My dad was a big time pimp, big time. Anything bad about a person, big time hustler. He was American. You know that movie with Danjo Washington? He was that but not that bad. He wasn't that big. But that's what it reminds me of. He was that kind of guy. And beat the shit out of me, beat the shit out of my mom. There was an incident one time when my mom got knocked out on top of the stairs and they drug her down the stairs by her hair. And at six years old, I'll never forget this, in my mind I was always afraid. My whole life I was afraid. But I had this fucking voice, this conscience that would always be battling me saying, hey, you got to get up and do something. I didn't want to do shit. I was just afraid. But that voice would force me to get up. And my dad, I try to beat him up whatever at six and I get my ass kicked. So this went on for several years. And I have a big time learning disability. My dad didn't believe in us going to school. So my dad, it was about the business, the skating rink and the bar. So the skating rink opened about seven o'clock at night. And this is the time I was able to walk. So about four, five, six years old, eight, nine. And I go to the skating rink, seven o'clock at night. And I worked the skating rink until 10 at night. And then we would scrape the gum off the floors and we cleaned the whole skating rink up. And then my dad had an office. And my brother and myself would sleep in the office. And my mom would go upstairs and work the bar until three o'clock in the morning. And then they cleaned the bar up. So after all that shit was done with going to school, rarely happened. So when I went to school, I was all kind of, you know, my learning disability. I had social anxiety. I was just a jacked up kid from living in this tortured home. From the outside looking in, we lived in an all white neighborhood. And then we would travel to the ghetto of Buffalo, New York, where the skating rink was at. So we worked around mostly blacks. And I lived around mostly whites. But no one knew what was going on in that house on 201 Paradise Road. You know, it's crazy. But my mom got courage to finally leave him. When I was about eight years old, we moved to a small town in Brazil, Indiana. And that's when the real war started for me. And Brazil, Indiana is a small town. Great people, a lot of great people. And I say that because a lot of people get offended. And I'm going to get to the point where I think it offended. There was about maybe 10 black families at about 10,000 people in town. And in 1995, the KKK marched in the Fourth of July parade. So this was not everybody was racist. There was a lot of good people. Some of the best people I knew was there. But there was also a lot of racism there. So me being one of the few black kids in that area, it kind of haunts you. I had stuff on my notebook. Nigga, we're going to kill you on my Spanish notebook. They had that on my car. Nigga, we're going to kill you. This is early 90s. And so even though I showed it didn't hurt me, it was jacking me up. So all the insecurities I had when I was a kid with my father, I moved into this area here. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And it haunted me. And that voice that I talked about, it kept talking louder and louder and louder. I was doing nothing about it. And I decided to make moves. And I cheated all through school. And it's kind of humbling to talk about my story sometimes. And it's also embarrassing. But it's real. It's who the fuck I am. It's what I am. It's what created me. And copy from the fourth grade to my junior year in high school on every assignment. And I wanted to get in the military. I wanted to join the Air Force. And the guy gave me an ASVAB test. It was like a watered down SAT. And I couldn't copy on it because the guy beside me had a test A, I had test B. The guy on my right had test C. So I looked at copy on this test and I couldn't copy on it. So I got like a 20. And I wanted to be an Air Force pararescueman. It's guys that jump out of airplanes and save down pilots. It's a special operator in the Air Force. And my score was so horribly low that we take it again. And he said, hey, I got like an 18 the second time, even worse. I need to get a 50 out of a 99. And so my mom and I, for a while, we lived in the government subsidized apartments, $7 a month, and also food stamps. And we slowly moved up to a $230 a month place. But at the time, you know, we were pretty poor. But my mom afforded enough money for me to go to see a tutor one hour a week. So for four hours a month, it had six months to study for my last test. I was going to take the asthma test, you know, the asthma test three times. And I studied my ass off and passed it. And I got in the Air Force and realized there was more things in front of me. I was afraid of the water, terrified of the water. And I learned how to swim. But what gets everybody in this training, in all special ops training, is the water confidence. They try to pretty much drown your ass. You know, all of our lives we've been breathing. And they take that from you. And they want to see how comfortable you are in the water. And there's only 1% African Americans in special operations. And I didn't know anything about African. Like, a lot of them are negative buoyant, which I am, because of the bone density. I struggled. But six weeks into the program, there was about 25 guys left out of about 150. I was there. And I was never—I didn't go to sleep for six weeks in the program. And I wanted to quit so badly. But I quit everything in my life. I copied through school. I wanted to prove people wrong. And so here I am in this Air Force program, starting to get a little more confidence. But this water was kicking my ass. And six weeks into the program, the doctor gave me a blood test. And I was at sickle cell. Sickle cell trait, not the anemia. But it still killed people. But so they pulled me out of training for a week. And when you go from being very uncomfortable in that water situation, and then now you're comfortable, and I'm sitting back watching the guys drown, because I'm not part of the activities anymore for this week, I didn't want to get back into that damn water again. So the fear overcame me. And all my insecurities from my dad, from this small town, from everything started coming back. And even though no one knew how fucked up I was, kind of created this other person who was tough, I live with this shit all the time. So me not wanting to go back in that water, the doctor called me back up. I thought I was going to get like a medical kick out of the military. So no quitting for me. They'll kick me out so I can have some pride. The doctor said, no, man, we're going to put you back in the training. And I was like, fuck. But after a week, I'm like, you know what? I missed one week. There's only three weeks left. There's a good chance. You know, I could tough this shit out and go on. But I went back to the CO and the commanding officer of the program. And the sergeant said, hey, you got to start from day one because you missed that week of training. And I broke. I broke. I couldn't imagine going back through that again. So I made up a lie. And I said, man, the sickle cell thing is really scaring me. It was the fucking water. It wasn't sickle cell. And I pretty much quit. Even though they gave me a medical, I quit. So from the age of 19 to the age of 22, I went and did a job called Tack P, where you control fast movers behind enemy lines. Cool job, but there's no water. I was afraid of the water, so I avoided it. And I gained 125 pounds in that time frame. I went from 175 to almost 300 to 297 was my heaviest. And I started finding things that was comfortable. And the more things I found comfortable, the more uncomfortable my mind was. Because that voice I was telling you about, it always was there. I was just trying to avoid that conscience. I wanted to be left alone from that conscience, and it wouldn't leave me alone. So I got out of the Air Force, and I started working for a job called EcoLab, respray for cockroaches, at 24. And I'm spraying at different steaks and shakes, red lobster, whatever, from 11 o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning. And what changed, I came home and watched this Discovery Channel show, Class 224. I came home from steak and shake. I sprayed it down last, get a big old large 42-ounce shake, walk across the street and get a box of mini donuts from 7-11. And I would drive home for 45 minutes, this big old fat guy who, yeah, I worked out, but I was fat. I didn't run, didn't PT, I just hit the gym. So I'm driving home, turn the TV on, and what comes on, Discovery Channel show, and that's where everything changed for me. I was taking a shower, I walked out, heard these guys, and I watched the show. And it made me reflect big time on the piece of shit that I am, and I'm exactly what people said I was going to be. So what was on this show that really struck home? It was, I saw these guys going in the water, so I was terrified of it. I mean, I can't even express. Have you ever had a big fear? And I know a lot of fighters have fears and stuff like that, but they get over them. But a lot of us have these fears that you just don't want to fucking face. And I have a lot of them, had a lot of them, and that's what created the person who's in front of you today, and we'll get into that. But just a scared bitch is what I was, and, but I was watching these guys going through Hell Week, Class 224, and these guys ringing the bell, quitting, dropping their helmet down, rolling out. A lot of guys just leaving. And it made me reflect on my fears, my insecurities. And I saw real men, what I thought were real men who were staying, who were overcoming adversity, who were overcoming all these different things that I had blamed so many fucking people in my life, my dad, my mom, for not being there. When I was 14 years old, my mom was going to get remarried to this great guy. He got murdered. And then I moved back to that small town in Brazil, and everybody was blamed. My learning disability, my skin color, you know, me being everything. And so I sat there for a while, and I was like, man, I got to fucking, I got it. No one's going to fucking come to help me. No one's going to fucking come to help me. It's fucking me against me, period. And so I had the man up, and I said, first I got to start doing this, facing every fucking fear I have. No matter what the fuck it is, man, and these things would keep me up. And no one, people who are hearing this shit, they will never really understand and grasp when you face these things and so many things, how they keep you up and haunt you at night. I think there's a lot of people out there that know what you're talking about. I mean, and so that's what it did. And I had two options. To either be that 300-pound guy who's prayed for cockroaches and made $1,000 a month, and at 24 years old, knowing when I'm 50 fucking years old, I can reflect on this and think about what guy I never became, or I can totally just sack it up and fail and fail and fail until I succeed. So I started calling recruiters up. I said, I'm going to be a fucking Navy SEAL. And every recruiter, so there's a weight and height – so the weight and height limit to get in the military. And I was 6'1 and 297, and I had prior service, which was a big deal. So I called all these recruiters up, and all of them said, hey, how tall are you? Blah, blah, blah, blah. They got into conversations to see if I was even qualified. And by the time I got to my weight, the phone would hang up pretty much like, hey, you know what? Call somebody else, you know, try to get in the reserves. So I tried to get in the reserves. And I called this guy named Steven Saljo, recruiter up, and he said, hey, come on in. He saw me, put me through the weight standard, all this other stuff. And to get into the class I had to get into, I had to lose 106 pounds in less than three months. So I was like, fuck that. I can't do that. I grabbed my chocolate milkshake and went back to Eagle Lab. I'm going back to work, man. This is my life. So in this job, you look – you know, you're looking for cockroaches, looking for rodents and stuff like that. And this next morning or this next night I went to work and I hit the – I don't like cockroaches too much. I hit the mother load of cockroaches. And this restaurant got full of cockroaches and rodents and everything else. And I sat there and said, this is my life. I said, this is my life. You are exactly who the fuck – this is it. And I said, this ain't going to be it for me. So in that restaurant I quit my job, left my canister in that restaurant, my spray canister, got back in my Eagle Lab truck, and I went home. And I started working out like somebody – I became the most obsessed person on the planet Earth. And I was basically – I had to invent a guy that didn't exist. I had to invent a guy that can take any pain, any suffering, any kind of judgment, be called nigger, be called whatever the fuck in the world and be able to stand in the fucking room and say, go fuck yourself. I had to build this callous mind and I built it through suffering. I built it through downright fucking just crushing myself. If it was raining outside at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, if it was snowing, the first thing I think is don't go out there and do shit. My instinct was we got to fucking go out there. Anything that was fucking horrible in my life that I would normally say no that was inhumane to most people, I had to go do it. And I started callous in my mind at this point in my life. And I lost the weight. I lost the weight and I went back to the recruiter. I got into that class and I went through three Navy still hell weeks in one year. Only got it ever being three hell weeks in one year to my knowledge. The first one I didn't make it through, the next two I did. And that I just didn't stop anymore from there. And I started realizing through this process that the fucking mind is what you created. And I started opening different doors that I didn't think were even there. They didn't think even existed. And the more doors I opened up, the more I started realizing that my potential is damn near endless. And it changed my whole mindset. So I went from David Goggins and I created Goggins. And that journey is a priceless journey that is hard for me to even explain to people because it sounds so quick and easy. Like I lost this weight and I went through three hell weeks. I went to Ranger School. I went to Delta Force, Lexent, whatever it is. It was brutal. It's a brutal journey every fucking day. And everybody goes, are you happy? If anybody knows my life story and I try to give you just a snippet of it, where I'm at today is in front of Joe Rogan telling you my life. To get through where I became, to get through where I'm at now, there's nothing but pride I have for myself that I can't really show people. Because I have this face, I have this face that they see like, are you happy? What's wrong with you? I'm driven. I'm obsessed. And that's what you see. That's it. People need to hear this story. This is an exciting story for people because there's a lot of people out there that feel trapped and they feel stuck. And they feel like they can't do anything. This is who they are. You're a guy who felt that exact same way, but figured out how to not be that person and be a person that you would admire. How did you – what were the first steps? Like, you had some slips before, right, because you quit because of the water thing. But then when you went back the second time and you decided you're going to lose all that weight and you quit that job, did you – was it just straightforward from there? Or were there some days where you just failed and then you picked it back up again? So my first run when I decided to lose the weight, I was, like I said, 297. I was about 32 percent body fat. And I went – my idea was to run four miles for my first run. I didn't know how bad it was going to fucking hurt me. I used to run before I was fat. And I was like, fuck it. I can do this. I ran a quarter mile and walked home. I walked home and sat on my couch and cried. I went to my mom's house, who was about 40 – about maybe 20 minutes down the road and cried and getting her couch and saying, man, I can't fucking do this shit. I don't know what I'm going to do. I just got somebody pregnant. My life was this fucked. I was making $1,000 a month. My rent was $8,000 a month. And my mind just kept fucking with me and kept, fuck, you're not good enough, man. This isn't for you, man. These guys are the best motherfuckers on the planet Earth. You're not that. And what it was – and it's kind of funny – I was obsessed with Rocky. Rocky won in particular. And when I was a kid, I come home every day and I watched this fucking show, Rocky. And I would fast forward with the little VHS tapes to round 14. Round 14 fucked me up like nobody's business. Why? This song came on, right? So when I bought the pull-up record, I listened to the song for 17 hours. It's two minutes and 13 seconds. And I'm able to visualize and dream like nobody's business. And I know that I can create a vision that many people can't. And I work for it. So the vision I had was when Apollo 3 beat the fucking shit out of Rocky, beat the shit out of him. He kept fighting. He was a dumb fighter. Couldn't read. Couldn't fuck. That was me. Couldn't read. Couldn't write. Just punchy. Everything about him. And Rocky beat the shit out of him. He was in that corner and everybody was saying, stay the fuck down. And him getting up, him getting up, Apollo Creed raised his arms up in the fucking air, turned around, thought he wanted to fight. He turns around and sees this guy getting up. And it was the face of Apollo Creed that changed my life. The face of Apollo Creed. It was like just by that motherfucker getting up, not winning, just by him getting the fuck up, Apollo Creed was his champ. He was the best. Rocky had taken his soul, had literally taken his soul. His head goes down. He looks at him like, what the fuck are you? I wanted to be that. Not Rocky. I wanted to be the guy that people looked at. I don't care if you like me or didn't like me. I don't care. But it said this motherfucker is going to keep coming after whatever the fuck is in front of him. I wanted that. I wanted that. I wanted that worse than anything in the world. So that is I kept picturing me falling down and getting up. And every motherfucker that called me nigger, I was dumb. Even myself, even myself, I wanted to feel something besides defeat. I wanted to just go the distance. And that going a distance pushed me to a point of where now I go way past the distance. So you go the first day. You run a quarter mile and then you walk back home and you're upset. How do you move forward? So basically what I did was I came home and I had a chucking milkshake. I sat down and I gave up. I said, this ain't going to fucking happen. I got to lose 106 pounds and I can't even go a quarter fucking mile. I started being able to take negative shit and be happy. And this whole I say what if a lot, it sounds corny and it sounds weak, but it's true. One of the recruiters said there's not many black Navy SEALs. Matter of fact, I was a 36 African American SEAL in history. It's over seven years because the fucking water, you know, I mean, people get mad at me. It's fucking true. Just get over it. And so I was like, Matt, what story would it be if my fucking fat, dumb, lying to be friends with people, insecure ass can overcome this shit? That what if mentality, like that dreamer mentality just would always fuel me. It was just for me, man. What if I can be, what if I can be a SEAL, man? What if I can go from one and a quarter of fucking mile now, now I run two or five miles. What if I can go? What just what if I can go in and what if how would that feel if I'm graduating? Kind of get at the graduation thing. I was talking about 224 that like the video I sat down and watch this command officer stood up and he said to the graduation. Got your graduating buds, like 18 of them. He said we live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded. And he went on to say something about these men to test mediocrity. And I wanted to be a man that to test mediocrity. It got me a lot of trouble in the SEAL teams and going forward in my life because I just I started looking down on people for not going hard as fucking shit. And I started to create different things, but that's for a different day. But I just believe that my whole mind changed.